


Of Regulus

by paddypads



Series: An alternative to falling apart 'verse [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-04-06 01:22:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4202550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paddypads/pseuds/paddypads
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She tells him, then and there, what’s coming. She does it calmly, and matter-of-fact, and somehow, for some reason, gently. He doesn’t understand why she’s being so kind to him. He doesn’t understand why she thinks he won’t know that there’s a war coming."</p><p>When he is fifteen, Regulus is offered a choice, and his decision changes everything. He becomes a spy for the Order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Regulus

**Author's Note:**

> So I got an ask on tumblr about where Regulus would fit into an everybody lives au and this is something I've been sitting on for a little while. It's a bit rushed but Regulus is my baby and I adore him. Dear God, do I adore him.

It starts when he’s fifteen. He’s in Hogsmeade, and he’s alone, for once. The others, they all say that he’s too young to go with them. Next year, they say. Next year, he can be a Death Eater. But it’s not only Voldemort’s deputies who are out recruiting that day, and Regulus is trying so hard to enjoy his solitary walk to the Shrieking Shack that he doesn’t notice that he’s being followed. A polite cough alerts him to the presence of Professor McGonagall. He’s confused, that’s for sure. She’s not his Head of House, why would she want to talk to him? 

She tells him, then and there, what’s coming. She does it calmly, and matter-of-fact, and somehow, for some reason, gently. He doesn’t understand why she’s being so kind to him. He doesn’t understand why she thinks he won’t  _know_  that there’s a war coming. He’s fifteen, not an idiot. He tells her as much, and, to his surprise, she smiles.  

 _“How like your brother you are,”_ she says to him, and she’s not smiling, but she isn’t angry, either. Regulus isn’t used to that being a compliment. Maybe that’s why he stays to listen.

She tells him that they need him. That the time has come to choose what he will be, which side of history he will be on. Where will the Black family be, when this is over? Will it stand tall; the purebloods who chose the right side, or will it fall? The choice is his, and he must make it now. Dumbledore has been watching, and he hears things. He hears that the sixth and seventh years from the old pureblood families meet up with ex students on the Hogsmeade weekends. He hears that they talk about joining Voldemort. He can be one of them, McGonagall tells him, or he can join them. The Order of the Phoenix. His brother is one of them, she tells him. 

“ _What can I do?_ ” he asks. “ _I can’t do what Sirius did. I’m not him. I can’t leave my family.”_  

 _“We don’t want you to,”_ she tells him. _“We want you to become a Death Eater. We want you to join them, and pass information on to us. And then, when this is all over, we’ll protect you.”_

He asks if he can think about it. She tells him that there is no time for thinking. He must decide, here and now, today. Regulus surprises himself when he says yes. Her reaction is to give him detention every Thursday night for the next month. She says it is to teach him Occlumency, and Legillmency. He cannot help but feel proud when he tells her that these are skills that he mastered at the age of twelve. 

When he is sixteen, they invite him to the meeting. They tell him that he is from a great and noble family, an ancient line, and that his place among them is a birthright. He will be a part of the inner circle, if he wants it. He will be Marked. The others, they will have to earn what he gets, simply for being born with the right name. Later that night, when he writes his Transfiguration essay, he tucks a short list of names into it. Everyone who was there that day. McGonagall summons him to her office, on the pretense of going over the finer points of his essay, and giving him some extra reading. Instead of these things, he is given a chance to recite the details of everything that transpired. 

Two months before his seventeenth birthday, Regulus goes to McGonagall, to show her the black brand on his arm. She tells him that she is proud of him. 

The role becomes all-consuming. His Mother and Father are proud, too, but when they say it, it feels hollow. He bows before Voldemort, impresses him, with his knowledge of parselmouth. That is what grants him closer access than even Bellatrix. The ability to talk to snakes is never one he has used often. He is actually a little frightened by snakes, has been, ever since Sirius told him bedtime stories about basilisks. In Sirius’ stories, the basilisks were always slain by knights with mirrored shields. In reality, there are no knights, only spies and liars. He lies well, and the Dark Lord trusts him enough not to push into his mind. They share the bond of Slytherin’s heirs; he is the closest thing Lord Voldemort has ever had to a friend. 

That is how he finds out about the diary. He gets only five minutes alone with it, but that it long enough for him to know what it is. He is a Black, after all. He grew up in a house filled with books on the darkest of magic. But reporting to McGonagall is much harder now. He is with Voldemort always, and so he resorts instead to writing everything down. A tiny notebook, kept hidden in the folds of his robes. The ink is charmed to be invisible. Only at the sound of his brother’s name will it reveal itself. 

His chance comes when he is nineteen. Voldemort is delighted by something, news of a prophecy, a way to become truly undefeatable. He takes Regulus to a cave by the sea, shows him how to get across the lake, in exchange for Kreacher’s services. Regulus hates watching Kreacher suffer, he hates the attitude that it is merely his duty, all that he is good for. It is everything he hates about these people, and he wonders now if it was the little things that niggled at him from childhood that lead to his being here now. Perhaps is he had been able to push them aside, he would not be planning to come back here, and take the locket for himself. His mother has one, the same size and shape, which she never wears. It will make a good replacement, he thinks. And now he knows what all the Horcruxes are. There is the diadem, hidden and Hogwarts. There is the cup, which Bellatrix keeps in her vault, and this locket, tucked away beneath a cliff. A family ring, which Voldemort claims to regret giving up, hidden in his mother’s home, and the diary, which Lucius Malfoy keeps hidden. Five horcruxes, out of a planned six.

To his astonishment, when he returns to Grimmauld Place that night, there is a cat on his bed. He does not own a cat. Nobody in his family owns a cat. Regulus spends a moment admiring her markings, particularly the ones around her eyes. It’s about then that the cat becomes Professor McGonagall. 

 _“I was worried about you,”_ it is startlingly forthright. “ _I haven’t heard from you in months.”_

  _“There was something I had to find out,_ ” he tells her, pulling the notebook from his robes. _“There are horcruxes. I know where they are, and how they’re guarded. If they can be destroyed, the Dark Lord will be mortal.”_

Regulus has never seen anyone look as relieved as Minerva McGonagall does in that moment. She tells him about the prophecy, about the Potters and the Longbottoms. Regulus does not know that he particularly cares about James Potter. James took his brother from him, left him alone and trapped, but he knows Alice Fortescue. She was always kind to him, and, anyway, they have a baby. They are Sirius’ friends. He hopes that one day he and his brother may be friends again. Helping to save the Potters may help him with Sirius. And soon, Sirius will be all the family he has left.

McGonagall leaves with the notebook. She returns two days later, to help him plan the faking of his own death. Everyone had to believe it. Even Kreacher. Regulus Black dies, at the age of nineteen. He hides upstairs when his brother comes to visit McGonagall. He listens, as she comforts him, never once giving away that she knows a truth that he does not.

Regulus is remarkably active for a dead man. He and Dumbledore and Alastor Moody (who always keeps one eye on him) hunt the horcruxes together. They are left, in the end, with six seemingly random objects, some of which are quite possibly priceless. Dumbledore gets the strangest look when he sees the ring, and goes to put it on. It is only Regulus’ warning that saves him. They burn them, burn it all, with fiendfyre. At the end, the stone is left, cracked with the heat, but still whole. 

They have done it just in time. The hour after it is done, Severus Snape comes to visit. Moody hides Regulus away, and they hear Snape say that it will happen.

 _“I don’t know who told them,”_  Snape says.  _“But he knows where Lily lives. He knows. He’ll be there soon. Hours, maybe. Minutes, perhaps. He said that he needed time to prepare but I don’t know how long. Please. You must save her.”_

 _“Must?”_ Dumbledore says. _“I must do nothing. Leave me now. I will warn James and Lily Potter.”_

Dumbledore sends him back to McGonagall, sends a patronus to James and Lily, and Alastor Moody to find Sirius. Sirius is, it seems, the secret keeper. It is he who has betrayed them. Regulus is making Minerva tea when the Potter’s arrive. It takes an awful lot of explaining. James is not terribly pleased with him for being alive, apparently. He berates him for what he put Sirius through. 

 _“He’s your brother!”_ James shouts.  _“He loved you and you let him think you were dead? He would have helped. He would have taken you in.”_

 _“Perhaps you shouldn’t be so quick to defend him,”_ Regulus snaps back _. “He was your secret keeper. He betrayed you.”_

He is astonished when Lily laughs.

 _“Sirius wasn’t our secret keeper. He turned it down, said that he was the obvious choice and we could hide someone else behind him. He isn’t a traitor.”_ She shakes her head, and looks close to tears.  _“Peter is.”_

Regulus smiles. It is a hollow, empty smile.  _“I suppose being a traitor doesn’t run in the family, then,”_  he says. 

And so the whole story comes out, about the horcruxes, about the years of lying, and to his astonishment, Minerva defends him whenever the need arises. By the end, James looks almost impressed. Lily actually hugs him, which is a little strange. Later, she stands by him when he explains himself to Sirius. He expects his brother to shout, to hate him for lying. But Regulus has barely begun before Sirius is pulling him into tight embrace, and they are both crying, although Regulus does not quite know why.

The years after the fall of Lord Voldemort are strange for Regulus. For the first time in his life, he is free. He can do what he wants; he is a war hero. His testimony has placed dozens of Death Eaters behind bars, and though he is more than a little afraid of those who are left, and what they would do if they were to find him, Minerva McGonagall is his secret keeper. He finds, to his surprise, that they are friends. He trusts her with everything. They have tea once a week, and she tells him about her students, and listens to him talk about his job. He doesn’t talk to her about Marie. He talks to Sirius about Marie. She’s a sweet girl, French. She works in the Ministry, in magical cooperation. She is also muggle-born, which Sirius finds hilarious. Regulus points out that Sirius is fucking a half-blood werewolf, and this shuts him up. 

Regulus and Marie marry at the age of twenty-two. They have four children, ten grandchildren, and, at the time of Regulus’ death, five great-grandchildren. He outlives his wife by a decade, but he dies knowing that between them, he and his brother have saved the House of Black. Sirius has had two children, adopted war orphans, that he raises with Remus. One of them is called Regulus, the other Hope. Hope is a Black, and little Reggie a Lupin, but Regulus doesn’t mind. Their family is good, and strong, and noble, and all the better for having the Lupins in it. The Potters, too, are their friends. They have dinners together, every Sunday, until they are all too old to manage it, and Tonks is too exhausting for their old bones. Sirius dies first, of some muggle illness that magic has no cure for. He is only sixty-six. Regulus himself dies at the age of ninety-seven. He passes away quietly, in his sleep. There is a smile on his face. His brother and his wife will be waiting for him. There is nothing to fear from death. 

There is, of course, another version of this story. There is a version where Regulus says _"no",_ where Minerva McGonagall is forced to wipe his memory, and send him on his way. There is a story where he dies, at nineteen, in a freezing black lake, surrounded by those who are already dead, with poison coursing in his veins like fire. He never reconciles with his brother. Marie marries another man, and has only one child. James and Lily Potter die, and Lord Voldemort nearly wins. Sirius Black lives for thirty-six years, and Remus Lupin is alone for twelve. It is a story of loss and sorrow. There no knights with mirrored shields in that story, either. Only spies, and a boy with a scar on his forehead, and glasses held together with sellotape.

But we all know how that story ends. That story will stay with us for all our lives, even as we forget some of those in it, even as we forget Regulus Black.

**Author's Note:**

> I would love to hear any thoughts you may have on what is essentially my personal favourite headcanon. Pretty please review?


End file.
